Chip Taylor

Public parks

Are one public amenity that, as a libertarian, I still have problems arguing against. I mean, public green space -- especially in an urban setting -- provides benefits to everyone in the vicinity and can be fairly inexpensive to operate and maintain. Cut the grass, paint the picnic tables, try to keep it from turning into a homeless tent city.

Chicago has a new park:

Millennium Park, is opening four years late and at three times the original budget, but few here are complaining.

Why would they complain? By public project standards that's practically on-time and under-budget.

But it's not what I think of when I think of a park. (Not that I'm the arbiter of such things.):

This will not be a park with large meadows, groves or other spaces for quiet contemplation. Among its major features are two extraordinary art objects. One is a 110-ton polished-steel sculpture by the British artist Anish Kapoor. The other, by the Spaniard Jaume Plensa, will be centered on two 50-foot-high towers onto which close-up photographs that have been taken of Chicagoans will be projected while water streams over them.

I don't mean to be too snarky. It's not my idea of a park, but perhaps it's an improvement over what was there before:

This project is a milestone for Mayor Richard M. Daley, who has made the physical reconstruction of Chicago a priority. The 24.5 acres on which Millennium Park has arisen were for years an unsightly railroad yard. Generations of city planners wrestled with how to turn it into a civic space. Mr. Daley embraced this challenge, and despite mounting costs and missed deadlines, he insisted that when Millennium Park was completed, the city would have a new downtown treasure.

Quite a stick-to-it sort of guy, that Mayor Daley. Perhaps he had other motivations:

Last week, The Chicago Tribune ran a front-page article reporting that the company chosen to clean up after a recent city-sponsored food festival had submitted an inflated bid, but appeared to have won the contract because it donated tens of thousands of dollars to a political committee that supports Mr. Daley.

Reports like these appear here with deadening regularity. Last month, a former construction contractor told The Tribune that he bribed city officials in exchange for sewer contracts. Other companies connected to the mayor through friendship or campaign contributions have been accused of making inflated profits on contracts for projects like street paving and newsstands.

So, perhaps the park was just another avenue for graft, corruption, and political patronage. Maybe the park is providing some green afterall.